http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/442507256

Buffalo dance

Part of a series of Wild West show performances filmed for single-viewer peepshow machines. "As part of its appeal to authenticity, Buffalo Bill's Wild West included Native American performers, who by 1894 were participating in the show's reenactments of the Little Bighorn battle against Custer's cavalry--a revised history in which Buffalo Bill himself played a hero who takes 'the first scalp for Custer.' Buffalo dance is one of several kinetoscope films featuring Oglala and Brulé Sioux whom Cody brought over from Brooklyn on the Monday morning of September 24, 1894. The next day's New York herald reported archly on the scene under the headline Red men again conquered, 'A party of Indians in full war paint invaded the Edison laboratory at West Orange yesterday and faced unflinchingly the unerring rapid fire of the kinetograph. It was indeed a memorable engagement, no less so than the battle at Wounded Knee, still fresh in the minds of the warriors. It was probably more effective in demonstrating to the red men the power and supremacy of the white man, for savagery and the most advanced science stood face to face, and there was an absolute triumph for one without the spilling of a single drop of blood'"--Film notes by Scott Simmon.

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